Gendered reacculturation and marriage negotiation among single Chinese female returnees

Returning home after international study can involve complex readjustment, especially when personal life plans, family expectations, workplace experiences, and broader social norms do not fully align. In contemporary China, never-married female returnees may encounter distinctive expectations concerning marriage timing, family responsibility, career development, and future life planning.

Drawing on Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory and Patriarchal Bargaining, this study adopts a qualitative design based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with 22 never-married Chinese female returnees who had studied in Western countries and returned to China.

The findings suggest that participants' post-return experiences were shaped by multiple, interconnected layers of social life. At the family level, they encountered expectations related to marriage timing, filial responsibility, and socially approved life-course choices. At the workplace level, they described gendered assumptions, unequal professional opportunities, and concerns about career mobility. At the broader societal level, participants perceived public discussion around unmarried women and women with overseas experience as an additional source of pressure. These experiences shaped how participants evaluated marriage, with many approaching it cautiously while weighing family expectations, institutional conditions, reproductive concerns, and future quality of life.

The study suggests that continued singlehood among female returnees should not be understood simply as individual preference or delayed transition. Rather, it can reflect an ongoing negotiation of gendered expectations during reacculturation. The study contributes to scholarship on return migration, singlehood, and gender by showing how family, workplace, and wider sociocultural contexts intersect in shaping women's post-return lives in contemporary China.